1. Technical Field
The technical field relates to a stereoscopic image pickup apparatus that takes a stereoscopic image by using two imaging sections. In particular, the technical field relates to a stereoscopic image pickup apparatus capable of preventing excessive parallax from occurring at the time of shooting a telephoto image with a zoom lens.
2. Background Information
In recent years, attention has been focused on image pickup apparatuses that independently shoot a left-eye image and a right-eye image in a synchronous manner so as to obtain a stereoscopic image (a 3D image). There have been proposed various display devices and methods for viewing the stereoscopic image. All of them are based on the basic principle that three dimensions are provided by using binocular disparity. In many cases, the stereoscopic image pickup apparatuses control the convergence angle, which is an angle formed between optical axes of two imaging sections intersecting with each other. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 2010-103895 discloses an image pickup apparatus having a camera shake prevention section for preventing the effect caused by shaking of the hands unintentionally in an image which is taken by changing an optical path from the photographic lens to the image pickup device in accordance with the shaking detected for each of plural imaging sections. The image pickup apparatus sequentially takes images while changing the convergence angle by controlling the camera shake prevention section for each imaging sections. In such a manner, it is possible to acquire plural images for which the convergence angles are different, and thus it is possible to select a stereoscopic image which is desired by a user.
There is a problem in that, when viewing the stereoscopic image taken by the stereoscopic image pickup apparatus, a person feels discomfort if the parallax is too large. The reason is that, regarding the stereoscopic image for which the parallax is too large, the person's brain is unable to unite the images into a stereoscopic image. In order to avoid this problem, on the set, a photographer shoots by adjusting the convergence angle, the angle of view, the object distance, and the like so as not to create a large parallax.